Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation

Today's topic is mindfulness/mindfulness meditation.

Being mindful and ruminating
You may have heard of being mindful, as in being mindful not to scratch someone's car on opening your car door whilst parked (I notice a few people aren't mindful of watching out for this). 

In a psychotherapeutic sense a mindful exercise may involve noticing the things around you when you are walking along, such as the trees or a dog chasing its own tail.  Things you may not consciously notice. I think the idea is that your attention can be developed by transferring it from what you are preoccupied mentally with to something different. This should be a more positive/interesting or at least neutral thing (such as the dog chasing its tail).  It is helpful to be in a situation where there are visual cues such as the scenery (trees), objects that can be noticed (buildings) or people.  Something you can pay attention to.

It is important in my view if you have the habit of ruminating to divert your attention from the rumination topic and mindful activity is one way you can try.  Of course, in the abscence of any visual or aural stimuli to focus on or pay attention to (nice psychological term) once a ruminitive 'trigger' thought occurs it can be observed as such but from then on no attention should be paid to it.  

A technique thought-wise could be to transfer your attention to more interesting and pleasant thoughts, as my therapist suggested.  My therapist suggested 'ladies in bikinis'.  I, in turn, and after some consideration agreed this was indeed pleasant and also interesting thought material. 


Rumination and mindfulness part 2
But going back to mindfulness, developing the habit of awareness of something other than your thoughts that seem to be food for rumination or worry is a habit worth developing.  A goal would be to transfer the attention away from the ruminative thoughts and therefore weaken or diffuse the habit of rumination. This could be visualised as keeping the traffic (thoughts) flowing as opposed to creating or being involved in a traffic jam (rumination).

I can rememeber a thought like "Have I left the gas on?" preyed on my mind as this initial 'trigger' thought precipitated a chain of rumination because as part of my OCD behaviour an element of doubt appears even when I was certain all was well.  Because I responded to this thought emotionally (fear) this precipitated the ruminative behaviour and increased anxiety.  The false belief was that it was problem solving and not rumination. 

The technique of diffusion was useful here as introducing some element of humour seemed to do something against the rumination. I tried to make light of the situation by thinking, "I know I turned off the gas today but I will probably be roasted by my partner because I know I didn't pay the gas bill as it's still on the kitchen table."

It is reassuring that people I know who do not claim to suffer persistent OCD-type of behaviour or thoughts can occasionally be plagued by worrying thoughts such as the above. I found this reassuring and more than a small crumb of comfort as it proved to me it was not so unusual to think or feel like this and not the preserve of those who may have been labelled as obsessive compulsive.  But back to our topic of mindfulness.

A mindful exercise can also involve inspecting objects as well as developing awareness in our surroundings, perhaps to achieve much the same effects.  One example I remember was looking at a pine cone closely. I believe the exercise was to notice all of the little intricacies in its formation and appearance.  Doing so focuses your attention to it for a while. I believe this 'while' serves as a gap where distraction and a chance to 're-focus' away from ruminative mental behaviour.

Mindfulness meditation is related to this, as the refocus of attention is the common element here.  As always, you can look this up specifically on the Internet but if you are interested in trying mindfulness meditation it may be better to seek out someone who can explain and guide you on how it's done. You may learn how it can help you and also if it's recommended that you should do it.  Perhaps ask your therapist?  It was recommended for me by mine and I feel having been guided on how to do it was much more useful than just reading about it and trying to follow it on my own.

If a picture from the 1970s TV series 'Kung Fu' starring John Carradine appears in your mind when I mention meditation then that's OK, as it also evokes this kind of image to me, which I find to be just the right association and put me in the mood to do it.  I would guess in popular imagination meditation of all varieties conjures up images of ashrams, the lotus position or the the summer of love in the 1960s.  But if this image or concept doesn't appeal, you don't need to picture yourself as Grasshopper or imagine you are residing as a Tibetan monk in an ashram. No philosophy has to be adopted if you are concerned about this.

I guess Thich Nhat Hanh brought Mindfulness meditation to the Western world, sometime in the 1960s.  Later on, Jon Kabat-Zinn's work in the late 1970s with Mindfulness based stress reduction plus his books in the 1990s gave it more of an airing as a use
in the world of therapy and psychotherapy.  It has also recently become more widely mentioned and practised in the UK as the NHS are using it as a form of aid to psychotherapy for some of its clients.

My experience has found that like other forms of meditation a sense of quietness and relaxation occurs.  I believe this has been reported by most people who practice it.  The attractive thing about it for me was that no 'forced' effort is required as it would probably be counter-productive.  You just ease yourself into it and relax, man, and let the looseness slip into your bones and your brain-banana (Sorry, I couldn't resist an attempt at talking the summer of love talk here.)

Focus your attention - but gently, mind
No forcing yourself to 'quiet the mind' is required in the type of mindfulness meditation I do. One intention of it, I believe, is in some way a gentle re-direction or focus of your attention in order to achieve some kind of internal peace. I think this is an important element which is also found in attentional training therapy.  I can see how this may be useful if you have OCD types of ruminations or preoccupations as you are almost training your attention or focus on something other than the topic of rumination.

An attention therapy exercise I know of asks you to focus the attention on various sounds you can hear, alteranting between the ones on your left side and then your right, for instance.  Attention training therapy is perhaps something you may have encountered but I am not sure if it's widely used in therapy.

Relaxation exercises 
For anxiety or OCD sufferers I would guess that any form of relaxation will be welcome and beneficial.  I found differential relaxation where muscles are tightened and then relaxed to enable the contrast to be felt helps generally with helping me maintain or restore a sense of calm.  It was put to me that a relaxed state is the obvious inverse of a tense, anxious state, which I guess is fairly obvious.

It would be more accurate to describe what I do as a mindfulness of breathing meditation.  A large part of it is on noticing your breathing. There's also a claim that this type of meditation can 're-wire the brain', if this kind of image is helpful for you to imagine. I always knew my brain's internal printed circuit board needed a good re-soldering and some new cable putting in - too many dry joints!  Perhaps those neural networks can somehow restore themselves with this kind of mental 'exercise'?

If you are interested in mindfulness meditation or relaxation exercises perhaps it is something you can ask your therapist or GP/doctor about.

Compliments of the season to you :)

Being Presumptuous - suggest don't tell me!

SMILE EVEN UPSIDE DOWN

I've been reflecting on doing this.  The word presumptuous comes to mind. The way it sounds here evokes images of upholstery to me. Maybe it is the ending of the word - sumptuous makes me think of comfy sofas. 

Knoworramean? I was referring to thinking people would want to read wot-I-write (I'll stop writing like this from now.)

But...have you seen CDs or DVDs?  The ones you can still buy and in the places you can still get them nowadays (rare and rarer) invariably feature only the 'star's' mugshot on the front and the title.  I assume if you can read you don't need to also see them to know what you are buying.  Apart from a stunning lack of creativity, these guys are not ashamed of having their face all over the place as they like to be seen and heard and talked about.  Some people like themselves a lot. 

Then there are people writing books etc. advising this or that or that you should do this or that and you will be better if you do.  Any reasonable author of these works would only attempt to suggest or advise that what they propose or detail may work or be of interest to the reader and would always advise caution for the reader to use their own judgement. 

Many authors of self-help books do, as I guess it's wiser for them and as a service to their readers, as the written word can be subject to interpretation and mis-interpretation if things aren't clear (and unfortunately even if they are). If a person reads a self-help book on assertiveness without using their own judgement (and also without reading and understanding what is being said) no-one will blame the author if that person challenges a skinhead who's pushed in front of them in the chip shop queue and as a result gets assaulted!  

I read that Frank Sinatra told his advisers that they could only suggest but not tell him what or how to do things.  This blog doesn't attempt to tell the reader how to do anything.  But it offers suggestions which are based usually on my experiences. Telling someone they should do something is very presumptuous.

But it is also because I don't have the answer to my problems and am not sure that anyone else has a definite answer.  But one of the better suggestions I can make is to try things for yourself.  I have tried many forms of therapy/things and am still trying mainly because to me trying is better than just letting things roll on as they are.  

Sometimes what may be termed spontaneous remission has occurred when I haven't particularly tried anything at all and things have got better, for a while at least.  Sometimes something has occurred or revealed itself to me about a problem when I've least expected it to what was a subject of continuing rumination.

But perhaps the underlying problem was still there going unaddressed or waiting for something?

My prior beliefs about therapy needed to be challenged.  I used to hold a belief that no therapy had worked or would work.  This was not completely true, as on reflection I recalled I had actually picked up some meaningful advice from many sources over the years and not only therapeutic ones. Questioning or listening to friends, GPs, psychologists, reading self-help books, other texts plus little bits in therapy sessions have made some difference.  Sometimes even a casual word or observation may switch on the light of illumination for you.

If what you hear or what you read makes sense to you, it can also have a meaning that stays with you and may perhaps offer some practical use to you. This was important for me to realise. Once I heard something meaningful or interesting I found it was too easy for me to just put it to the back of my mind, not knowing it could actually serve a purpose if I tried following the advice, or try what was suggested.

I remember a quote in a self-help book attributed to Deepak Chopra.  To paraphrase, it was generally about how the psyche reveals the truth in the gap between our thoughts, or something like this.  I liked the image of this when I read it but it also seemed to apply to my experiences of rumination which never provide any answers for me. I remember the occasions, when in a moment of quiet, an interesting realisation occured about the 'problem' I had been ruminating about.  Without any effort or provocation this realisation seemed to expose my concerns as being false.

I found having a therapist you can work with also helps who can guide you through the plethora of approaches/advice/techniques and who can work with you in achieving some kind of resolution or aid you in the psychological problems you have.

In my reflection, I must admit to having that element of ego as discussed above, as I guess I like the sound of my own typing.  But at least there is a kind of purpose for doing this, even if it's purely as self-help and writing practice.  And perhaps for others there is a suggestion or two to take away and think about, bringing liquid into their otherwise dry day.  

To end with, I will practice what I don't preach (if you see what I mean) and suggest but not tell you (thanks Frank) that if any of the above makes any sense to you please feel free and  try something new or different, but use your judgement as well.  This reminds me of a psychotherapist's statement made to me - "You are the best psychologist you can get".

Hope things are well.



'Interesting' factoid
You can still buy those mint biscuits that used to be called 'YOYOs' or 'YO-YOs'. They are now called 'Viscount' biscuits and they still come wrapped individually in a green foil cover.   
I remember they used to do a toffee version as well but you can't get them now I think.
And yes, you can find a blog about this topic on the Internet as well.  You can still get Topic chocolate bars too. :)